


Three Little Words

by DiscontentedWinter, Michicant123



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, College Student Stiles, M/M, Mpreg, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-04 18:13:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15152816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michicant123/pseuds/Michicant123
Summary: Stiles's biggest problem has always been his mouth. It only takes three little words from him to ruin this thing he has with Derek.





	Three Little Words

**Author's Note:**

> Story by DiscontentedWinter.  
> Amazing artwork by Michicant123. 
> 
> You'll find the amazing art at the end of the story, since it's spoiler territory!

 

It only takes three little words to ruin Stiles’s life.

Three little words, after he’s just listened to Derek spill more in five minutes than he probably has in all the time they’ve been dating. Three little words, and Stiles can’t stop them from spilling out of his mouth:

“You’re kidding me.”

And then Derek’s gone, the door snicking shut behind him, and Stiles doesn’t know what to do.

Stiles doesn’t have the money for an airline ticket, so he drives for three days straight to get back to Beacon Hills. He pulls off the road whenever he needs to nap, overnights in truck stops, and maxes out his credit card on gasoline and gross gas station sandwiches. He tries to call Derek every few hours, like he has since Derek walked out of his shitty dorm room four nights ago, but Derek has his number blocked.

He reaches Beacon Hills on a Thursday evening, just as darkness is falling. It’s drizzling, and Stiles is so tired that for the past eighty miles he’s been seeing strange shapes running alongside the highway, keeping up with the Jeep. He’s had more near misses in the past few days than he wants to think about, and when he finally gets to the loft he’s so tired that he can barely stumble up the stairs to Derek’s apartment.

He unlocks the door with shaking fingers—the key’s been hanging on his keychain since before graduation—and slides it open.

It’s dark in the loft; darker than outside. Stiles slaps his hand along the wall until he finds the switch, gut clenching at how long it takes him, like if it isn’t instinctual anymore, what does that mean? But he hits it at last, and the lights flicker on.

The loft is no emptier than usual. It’s impossible to tell if Derek cleared out months ago, or if he’s just upstairs having a nap. He’s never bothered much with possessions, or anything but the most basic furniture.

“Derek?” Stiles calls out, his voice rasping, and rising on a thready note that fades away into nothing.

There’s no answer.

Stiles treads upstairs, pushing away the memory of the last time he did this, when he was breathless with laughter. The stairs creak a little under his soles, and tiny flakes of rust shower away. There’s always a faint dusting of them underneath the stairs, just like there’s always that same hole in the wall, and that same film of grime over the outside of the windows that makes the view look gray during the day, but at night makes the lights of the town look hazy and warm.

He reaches the top of the stairs and finds himself in Derek’s bedroom.

His gaze falls on the bed. The sheets are rumpled, but it’s impossible to know how recently they’ve been slept in.

Stiles gets on his hands and knees, and looks under the bed.

There’s nothing there.

Derek’s go-bag is missing.

He’s gone.

He’s gone, and the loft feels so much emptier than it did a moment ago.

 

***

 

It started the week before Stiles graduated high school. There was nothing climactic about it; he and Derek just somehow fell into each other’s arms one night, and it felt right. There were no fireworks that night. Falling for Derek felt like coming home after a long day. Comfortable. Safe. Quiet. They’d curled up together on Derek’s couch, and kissed for a little while, Stiles’s eyes wide with wonder that this was a thing that was happening, that this was a thing he was now allowed to do.

The fireworks had come a few days later when Stiles had cornered Derek in his kitchen, dropped to his knees and sucked him off like his life depended on it. After that, while he was still struggling to get his breath back, Derek had growled at him, picked him up and carried him to his bedroom, and rimmed him until he was actually crying and begging Derek to make him come.  

There were definitely fireworks that time.

 

***

 

When Stiles gets to his dad’s house, he almost falls out of the Jeep, shuffles into the house, and falls asleep facedown on his unmade bed.

He has dreams he’s still driving on the highway, only this time they aren’t near misses. This time he keeps crashing, over and over again.

“Stiles?”

He jerks awake to a hand on his shoulder, to find his dad sitting next to him on his bed. He’s still in uniform.

“Stiles, what the hell are you doing here?” Dad asks, his brow furrowed and his voice pitched low with concern.

“Dad.” He can’t feel the bed underneath him. Can’t feel anything except a gaping black void opening up to swallow him whole. “Dad, I ruined everything, and he’s gone.”

 

***

 

If Stiles was ever going to write down their epic love story, he would call it “Stiles and Derek: A Case Study of Terrible Timing.” He told Derek that a few weeks after they first got together, when Stiles was already counting down the days until he had to be at GWU. He’d worked so hard to get there, and now… now it felt like he’d somehow cheated himself out of everything he could have had by staying.

“Like what?” Derek asked, his eyebrows doing that thing where they smiled for him instead of his mouth. “A future where you become a fulltime pot smoker, bet on which store on Main will close down next, and spend your Friday nights hanging out in the parking lot at Wendy’s with all the junior high kids?”

“I think that’s Greenburg’s plan, actually,” Stiles said, poking Derek in the side as they lay in bed together. “You paint a very sad picture of smalltown life in the unfashionable end of California, Derek.”

“Stiles,” Derek said seriously. “We don’t even have an In-N-Out.”

“I was talking about _you_ , sourwolf. I was talking about missing _you_.” Stiles huffed out a breath. “Great. Now I’ve gone and got my feelings all over our tingly post-coital glow.”

“Don’t call it that.” Derek rolled onto his side and propped himself up on an elbow.

“Which word did you object to?” Stiles asked, quirking his mouth up into a grin. “It was _tingly_ , wasn’t it?”

“All of them.” Derek rolled his eyes, and then his expression softened. “You know I can come and visit you in DC, Stiles.” Something like trepidation flashed in his eyes. “If you want me to.”

“Why… why wouldn’t I want you to?”

Derek raised his eyebrows. “Because you’re young, and you’re about to be a college student away from home for the first time, and you deserve to meet people and have fun.”

“I like having fun with you,” Stiles said, knowing that Derek could hear the way his heart pounded faster. Knowing that Derek would recognize it was anxiety, and that it came from laying himself bare like this, but it wasn’t a lie. Never a lie. He reached out and ran his hand gently down Derek’s chest, fingertips tickling against his chest hair. “I don’t want to have fun with anyone else.”

“Then I’ll visit you,” Derek said, his mouth curling up into a small smile. Not the wide, dazzling coverboy smile he used to get his way with servers, or parking inspectors, or Mrs. McCreedy at the bakery when he wanted an extra cupcake for free. This smile was real, and rare, and just for him and Stiles. “If you want me to.”

“I want you to,” Stiles said, warmth swelling in his chest. “I really, really want you to.”

It wouldn’t be so bad leaving Beacon Hills behind. Not now that he knew it didn’t mean leaving Derek behind as well.

 

***

 

His dad’s face is creased with confusion. “Who’s gone, Stiles? What happened?”

“Derek,” Stiles says. It hurts to say his name. It pushes out of him like razor blades, slicing his throat and leaving it raw. Stiles can feel heat in his face, pressure behind his stinging eyes, and he’s fighting tears. “Derek left.”

“Come on,” Dad says, and hauls him up into an awkward hug. “Take a breath, kiddo. It’s okay. Come on.”

Stiles clings to his dad like he’s drowning.

“Derek’s fine,” Dad says. “I saw him yesterday.”

“No! I went to the loft and he’s gone!”

Dad makes a chuffing sound. “I saw him _yesterday_ , Stiles. He’s been working out on the site of the old house. He’s rebuilding. That’s probably where he was when you went by the loft. God knows none of you keep normal hours.” His dad pulls back, and looks down at him. “He didn’t tell you any of this?”

Stiles’s head swims. “No.”

“Why aren’t you talking?” Dad asks softly. “Did something happen between you boys? Is that why you drove across the damn country in the middle of the semester? Kiddo, what the _hell_ is going on?”

 

***

 

Stiles room at GWU was both better and worse than he was expecting. Better, because it had its own bathroom so he and his roommate didn’t have to share with the rest of the floor. And worse, because Stiles hated sharing with Ben. Ben was from Idaho. He was nice, and he kept his shit on his side of the room, and he wore button-up shirts like every day was school photo day. And Stiles was absolutely terrified of waking up in the middle of the night, screaming and flailing, and having Ben tell the entire campus that his roommate was crazy.

Ben probably wouldn’t have done that, but he might have asked to be moved or something, and so would the next guy, and word would get around.

It turned out that leaving Beacon Hills was a lot harder than Stiles had anticipated. Because here Stiles was on the other side of the country, but Beacon Hills still had its claws in him, didn’t it?

Stiles had always been a problem-solver. Most of that was the direct result of being a problem-creator, but why split hairs? He memorized Ben’s schedule, compared it with his own, and slept during the day when Ben had classes and he didn’t. At night he stayed up on his laptop, sometimes taking it down into the common room so that the light didn’t keep Ben awake. He fell asleep on the couches there more than once, and if he woke up gasping for breath, his throat raw, at least it didn’t seem like he’d woken anyone else.

It wasn’t a long-term solution. It wasn’t even a short-tem solution if Stiles was honest with himself. By the end of his first month at GWU he was running on empty, handing in papers that were embarrassingly bad, and blanking on answers in class that he should have known. For the first time in his life—including all the years he’d had werewolf bullshit to deal with—Stiles was looking straight down the barrel of academic failure. There was no way he was going to get accepted into the FBI if he flunked out in his freshman year.

One Friday afternoon he was startled out of a doze by a knock on the door. He shuffled across the room, and wrenched the door open.

“You look like shit,” Derek said frankly.

Probably, sure, but Stiles suddenly felt like a million dollars. “Derek! Fuck!” He couldn’t stop the wide grin splitting his face. Couldn’t even dial it back. “You’re here! Dude!” He punched him in the chest, and it had about the same affect as always: none. “You didn’t say you were coming!”

“Surprise,” Derek deadpanned. Like, Scott still thought Derek didn’t have a sense of humor, which was ridiculous. Derek was freaking _hilarious._ He was also sweet as hell.  “Come on, let me take you out to dinner.”

Dinner was at some burger bar just off campus. After dinner was much better. Derek had a hotel room. It wasn’t fancy, but it had a queen bed and Derek didn’t even care if Stiles took all the Pringles from the mini bar and got crumbs in the sheets.

What?

He needed to keep his strength up.

They only had the weekend together, and Stiles wanted to get his dick inside Derek, and vice versa, as many times as they could possibly manage.

“Have you lost weight?” Derek asked once during a lull, tracing his fingers over Stiles’s sweaty back as he face-planted on the bed.

“Mmm?”

“You look like you haven’t slept in a month either.”

“Feels like it too,” Stiles snorted, which was the truth. It was also the sort of truth that passed as a joke. “Come on. Tell me what’s happening at home. What have I missed in the fast-paced metropolis of Beacon Hills?”

“Hmm.” Derek leaned down and pressed his mouth to the blade of Stiles’s shoulder, making him squirm with sudden warmth. “There’s a new stop sign on Baker Street.”

“Jesus, I’m away for a month and the place changes beyond recognition!”

Derek’s laugh was soft, his breath hot against Stiles’s damp skin, and for a moment Stiles thought, _Yes._

Just _yes_.

There was nowhere else in the world that he would rather be. There was no one else in the world that he would rather be with.

For the first time in weeks, he slept through the night.

 

***

 

There is a very long silence after Stiles tells his dad what happened, and Stiles feels a burning flash of guilt and jealousy. Why didn’t he inherit that, huh? That ability to sit quietly for a moment, to attempt to process the impossible, instead of just blurting out the first stupid fucking words that come into his brain.

Like, _You’re kidding me._

Why the fuck couldn’t Stiles have got some of his dad’s composure instead of this goddamn pinball brain?

After what feels like hours, his dad exhales slowly, heavily.

“You fucked up, son,” he says, like Stiles doesn’t already know that. “You fucked up.”

Stiles grabs his pillow and hugs it. “What do I do, Dad?”

His dad’s mouth twitches; the ghost of a rueful smile. “Stiles, I’ve seen you walk into fights against monsters armed with nothing but a baseball bat—and don’t think I approve of that, by the way—and it has always been the hardest thing in the world to let you do that when all I want to do is grab you by the scruff of the neck and lock you up in a basement until you’re at least thirty, but _this_? Kid, this time it _is_ your fight, and I can’t help you with that.”

Stiles’s breath shudders out of him. “But I don’t know what to do.”

“Yeah, you do,” Dad says with more confidence than Stiles feels. His smile finally escapes him, and the skin around his eyes crinkles as he reaches forward to pat Stiles on the shoulder. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Yeah.

Yeah, Stiles supposes he’s here.

 

***

 

The morning dawns gray and overcast. There’s a chill in the air, and Stiles showers quickly and digs through his closet for one of the few plaid shirts he didn’t take to GWU with him. Jesus. He’s still got laundry lying on the floor of his dorm room. What is he supposed to—

 _No_.

He squeezes his eyes shut, and sucks in a deep breath.

No. If he thinks of the way he just left without even telling Ben where he was going, let alone his professors, then he’s going to have a panic attack. Derek is his priority here. Everything else can wait. Everything _has_ to wait.

Stiles gets control of his breathing, or his wild, flying thoughts, and heads downstairs for breakfast. His dad is making omelets, full of cheese and ham, and Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Really, Dad?”

“Have you heard about keto?” Dad asks. “It’s bacon, Stiles, and then more bacon. And cheese, and cream, and everything except carbs.”

“Sounds like bullshit.”

Dad pats his stomach. “Sounds like I’ve already lost five pounds this month, you mean.”

“Eating _bacon_?”

His dad raises his eyebrows. “It’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard lately.”

“Point.” Stiles jabs his fork into his omelet. “Dad, what if…”

“What if what?”

Stiles sets his fork down. “What if it’s too late?”

“Kid,” Dad says. “You’re not going to know that until you ask, are you?” His expression softens. “Want me to come out there with you?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. He feels like he’s five-years-old and on his first day of school. Like he’s being pushed into something big and terrifying, and he really, really wants his dad there with him to hold his hand. Except even when he was five, he knew there were some steps he had to take on his own. “But you were right. You can’t do this for me.”

“I can’t,” Dad agrees. “But I’ll be waiting for you to call me, okay?”

“Yeah.” Stiles picks up his fork again. The omelet is delicious, but it settles as heavy as rocks in his stomach. “I’ll call you as soon as I talk to him.”

He eats a third of his omelet before he quits, and grabs a bottle of water out of the fridge on his way out the door.

Setting back into the Jeep reminds him of days and days of driving, the lines on the highway still flashing past whenever he blinks. Lines on the highway, exit signs and speed limits, his aching muscles and throbbing head, the tires swallowing up the never-ending miles to go. His hand shakes when he turns the key in the ignition and the engine stutters to life.

The drive out to the Preserve is both familiar and terrifying.

If Derek—

_No._

No, he just needs to do this. He needs to stop thinking about it, and just do it, because when he thinks about it, all he can see is the look on Derek’s face when he’d said those three little words: _“You’re kidding me.”_

The last time…

The last time he saw that expression on Derek’s face was when Boyd was killed. And this time it was Stiles who put it there. Put it there like he’d reached into his chest and torn his heart out.

Stiles is only nineteen, but he’s seen a lot.

Last night, standing outside the door of Derek’s loft, he’d felt the weight of everyone who had passed through it, and never would again. Every day, he feels it in some way. People who passed through Derek’s door, people who sat in this Jeep with him, people whose initials he and Scott had to write in the stacks at the library because they weren’t there to do it themselves. And they were so young too. Stiles is older now that Boyd will ever be, or Erica, or Allison.

They were just kids, really, and it’s all they’ll ever be now. Kids, ghosts, memories, and the voices in his nightmares.

Stiles is only nineteen, but this isn’t the first time he’s needed redemption.

God, he hopes it’s the last.

 

***

 

Midterms were going to be the death of Stiles.

The _death_.

He should know. He was from Beacon Hills. Death was something he was very much familiar with.

He’d gotten better at sleeping these past few months, at least, ever since Ben got a girlfriend and spent most of his nights at her dorm. Stiles could sleep now, without worrying that he was going to wake up Ben up. And Derek managed to visit about once a month, which must have been a killer on his bank account, but whenever Stiles asked Derek said something about using his airline miles, and don’t worry about it. Stiles suspected it was bullshit, but he didn’t care, because the more often he saw Derek, the less often he had nightmares. It had been a week since his last one. A whole week of uninterrupted sleep. He’d be over the moon, except now he had midterms coming up, and he still wasn’t doing well enough that he could afford to backslide.

On Wednesday afternoon Stiles got out of his last lecture at three, grabbed a cup of coffee from the cheapest place on campus, and headed back to his residence hall. The strap of his messenger bag was digging into his shoulder—why did he think it was a good idea to get one of them instead of a backpack?—and he was tired, but the coffee should sustain him for a another few hours of study before he went to grab some dinner.

He was dragging his feet through the common room when the redheaded kid from the floor below his scrambled to sit up on one of the couches and said, “Hey, dude?”

“Yeah?”

The redheaded kid screwed up his face. “Um, there’s like a…” He made a gesture Stiles had no idea how to interpret. “Like, do you owe anyone any money or something? Because there’s a scary dude in a leather jacket waiting outside your door.”

For a moment Stiles just blanked, because he only knew one scary dude in a leather jacket, but also, it was Wednesday. And Derek wasn’t due to visit for another two and half weeks. Stiles had been making the days off on the planner tacked above his desk, with big red crosses, counting down the days until he got laid again like it was an advent calendar and Derek was Christmas morning.

“I don’t owe anyone money,” Stiles said. “But thanks, man.”

The redheaded guy gave him the thumbs up, and sank back down onto the couch.

Stiles hurried up the stairs, and there he was: Derek, lurking outside his door.

“Derek!” Stiles grappled with his coffee cup and his keys. “Lemme just...” He shoved the door open. “Come in. Wow, what are you even doing here?”

Derek followed him in. His hands were jammed in the pockets of his jacket, and he was wearing an expression Stiles hadn’t seen in years: his “This is private property” look. He looked closed off, shuttered, and that had always only been a defense mechanism, hadn’t it? Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

Stiles set his coffee cup down on Ben’s desk, panic fluttering in his stomach and squeezing his chest.

“What’s happened? What are you doing here in the middle of the week?” He searched Derek’s expression. The thin line of his mouth. The tight clench of his jaw. The way his eyebrows tugged together. The gaze that wouldn’t meet Stiles’s. “Derek. What’s happened? Is it Scott? Melissa? Oh no, is it—is it my _dad_?”

“They’re fine,” Derek bit out, his voice rasping. “Everyone’s fine.”

A reprieve, but Stiles wasn’t fooled for a moment. “Then what is it? Der?”

Derek’s shoulders were a tense line. He stared at a spot on Stiles’s floor for a moment, and then lifted his gaze to meet Stiles’s, and said, “I’m pregnant.”

White noise.

Just—

It was so far beyond anything Stiles had ever expected to hear that his disbelief bubbled out of him in an incredulous laugh. This was it! This was what he was always telling people. Derek had a sense of humor! Derek could be funny!

“You’re kidding me,” he said, because of course he was. Of _course_. Derek was breaking the tension, that was all. Stiles laughed again, half-turned away, and raised a hand to tug it through his hair.

When he looked back again, with something like _“Okay, now tell me why you’re_ really _here, asshole”_ on the tip of his tongue, Derek was already gone.

And Stiles was too shocked to run after him.

 

***

 

The dull light filters down thought the leaves. It’s not bright enough to make the dew-damp Preserve gleam, or to lift the chill. Not today. Today tiny hollows hold puddles of mist, and the damp forms in droplets on the windscreen of the Jeep.

Stiles rounds the bend to the site of the old Hale house, and pulls up to a stop.

The house is gone. It’s been razed, and, in it’s place, stands the framework of a new structure. Bare wooden bones mostly, sitting on a concrete foundation. There’s a massive stack of lumber to one side of the matchstick house. On the other side there’s a tent.

A fucking tent.

Because of course Derek is living out here in the fucking woods instead of going home to the loft every night. He probably wakes up at midnight and hammers in a few nails. Extreme werewolf nesting or, most likely, just Derek’s way of telling the world to fuck off and leave him alone while he does this thing.

Stiles climbs out of the Jeep just as Derek appears from behind the stack of lumber.

He looks tired. Pale. His facial hair has definitely taken the leap from “neat and artfully trimmed beard” to “I have been living in a tent for a week and I left my razor in town.” Stiles wants to tease him for it, but there’s a weight pressing too heavily on his chest, and he can’t even draw a breath.

“Stiles,” Derek says, and folds his arms across his chest.

Stiles’s gaze drops to his stomach. Derek’s shirt is untucked, and a little baggier than Derek usually wears them. He can’t tell if he looks a little softer around the middle, a little thicker, or not.

“What do you want?” Derek asks, in a monotone that Stiles knows—has known for _years_ —doesn’t mean he’s cold. It means he’s hurting.

Stiles strides forward with more confidence than he feels, and stoops to pick up a tool belt from the trestle in front of the lumber pile. “I want to help you rebuild your house.”

Derek looks at him for a long while and then, with a sharp nod, turns and walks into the bones of the house.

Stiles, his heart pounding, follows him.

 

***

 

They fall into a routine over the next few days. They don’t talk about _it_. Stiles doesn’t apologize, not yet, because to apologize means to bring it up, and Derek is wound as tight as a sea anemone, all sharp edges and poison barbs. Stiles knows better than to poke him.

So they don’t talk about it. They talk about the house instead, and Stiles learns his way around a nail gun without even impaling himself once. The time he nails his shirt to what’s going to be the kitchen doorway doesn’t count, but Derek extracts him with a slight quirk of his mouth that is almost as good as a belly laugh, and Stiles feels himself uncurl a little too.

Stiles brings sandwiches for breakfast and for lunch, and cold drinks in a cooler that he sets beside Derek’s tent every day. He also brings a spare comforter, because he knows the nights are getting colder, and Derek’s sleeping bag looks a little threadbare.

It’s lucky that Derek knows what he’s doing when it comes to the house, because to Stiles it’s like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle when there’s no picture on the box. Like, Derek has _plans_ , but Stiles can’t understand them whichever way he looks at them.

The house won’t be the same as the one that burned. This one will be single level. It will be small, and modern and neat. There’s a bedroom between the main bedroom and the guest room that they don’t talk about either, but Stiles finds himself drawn to that space. Sometimes he stands there, leaving dirty shoeprints on the concrete foundations, and tries to imagine what it will look like when it’s done. Tries to imagine the small person who will live here.

Derek looks at him strangely when he takes a marker and writes his initials on one of the wall trusses.

 _Just to prove I was here_ , Stiles thinks, flushing and putting the marker back in his pocket. _Just to prove I was thinking of you, whoever you turn out to be._

He and Derek work side by side for over a week before Derek finally says, “When are you going back to college?”

They’re sitting on what will one day be the front porch, but at the moment is just blank space in the dirt marked out with string and pegs.

Right. College. It suddenly feels like a lifetime ago, but Stiles doesn’t regret it.

“Derek,” Stiles says, setting his sandwich aside. “This is where I want to be.”

“In Beacon Hills?” Derek asks warily.

“No,” Stiles says. “With you.”

Derek’s expression starts to shutter.

Stiles plows on. “I’m sorry. I messed up when you told me. I know that. I don’t want to mess up again.”

“You should go back to school.”

“Yeah, well I ditched my midterms to come back here, so you’re stuck with me,” Stiles says, and then his voice falters. “If you want.”

Derek scowls. “I didn’t tell you to make you feel guilty, and drop out of school! I told you because—” He clamps his mouth shut suddenly, and glowers at the cooler.

Stiles hears it as clear as day anyway.

 _I told you because I was_ scared _._

“I know,” he says, and reaches out tentatively. Curls his fingers loosely around Derek’s wrist and feels his pulse fluttering under his fingertips “I know.”

They don’t talk again until it’s time to get back to work.

 

***

 

“You and Derek working things out?” Dad asks one morning.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “We’re getting there.”

“I went by the loft.” Dad raises his eyebrows. “Doesn’t look like he’s been back.”

“He’s kind of living on the site.”

“Kind of?”

“Okay, he is,” Stiles says with a sigh. “In a tent.”

“He’s living in a tent.” It turns out Dad can do deadpan just as well as Derek. And then, after a pause, he sighs. “Well, that can’t be comfortable, but I can’t say I blame him.”

Stiles wrinkles his nose. “What?”

Dad just gives him a look. It’s the one that says _I thought you were smarter than that, kid_. Stiles first remembers getting that look when he was three, and their neighbor caught him licking her mailbox. Stiles couldn’t explain it then, and he can’t explain it now.

But yeah, he’s supposed to be smarter than that.

Derek isn’t just living out at the site so that he can work through the night if he wants.

Stiles swallows the lump in his throat, and thinks of Boyd, and of all the other ghosts that must crowd around that loft. Of course Derek doesn’t want to sleep there, not when he’s creating new life inside him. Of course he wants to give his baby some place fresh and bright and safe.  

 

***

 

The week opens with Stiles learning how to make dovetail joints, and finishes with Derek turning up, closed-faced and lock-jawed, on his dad’s front porch, holding a store-bought pie. It was supposed to be an invitation to dinner, an acknowledgement of the fact they’re working together now on the house and maybe that means they can work together figuring everything else out, but Derek looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here. Whatever ease he and Stiles have slowly rediscovered working alongside one another to get the new house built, it all seems to vanish when Derek climbs the porch steps like he’s climbing a scaffold instead.

Stiles feels something sharp and brittle twist inside him.

“Take a breath, kiddo,” Dad says in an undertone, and puts a hand on his shoulder. He nods at Derek. “Derek. Good to see you again. Come on in.”

Dinner isn’t great, but it’s not awful either. Stiles catches his dad looking curiously at Derek a few times, his gaze dropping to his stomach more than once, but Stiles can’t blame him for that. God knows he’s been doing the same thing all damn week.

Stiles made meatloaf for dinner, and threw a salad together. It was a study in nonchalance; just a regular evening meal, nothing fancy, nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. Just an everyday occurrence, right, having your pregnant ex-boyfriend werewolf over for a meal?

 _Ex_ -boyfriend.

Is that who Derek is?

Stiles still doesn’t know, and it makes him jittery and anxious. He eats too quickly, and spills cutlery all over the table when he stacks the plates to carry them back into the kitchen. Then, standing over the sink with his hands braced on the counter, he takes a while to catch his breath.

He hears Derek and his dad talking from the dining room, and pads back quietly to listen.

“It’s a mess,” his dad is saying, and Stiles’s stomach swoops for a moment before he continues. “But so is life. Whatever you boys decide, you have my support.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Derek's voice sounds like it belongs to a much younger guy, and Stiles’s eyes sting when he thinks of how Derek has nobody to talk to this stuff about anymore. And not just the weird freaky stuff, but all the stuff. Because sometimes—and Stiles knows this achingly—everyone needs a dad. “This, and for Stiles to drop out of school.”

“I know you didn’t, son.” Dad’s voice is calm. “But life is full of surprises. Claudia used to say that’s what made every day an adventure.” Stiles can imagine that wistful smile his dad gets when he talks about her. “And Derek, I’m not just here for Stiles, okay? If you need anything, even if it’s just someone to bounce ideas off, I can be a pretty good listener.”

“Thank you.” Derek still sounds young. “I might… I might take you up on that.”

“My door’s always open, son.”

There’s silence then, because Derek doesn’t know how to deal with kindness offered freely like this. Maybe he thinks Dad should be yelling at him for ruining Stiles’s life. Maybe he thinks Dad should be yelling at him for ruining his own life. But if Derek was expecting condemnation, he’s come to the wrong house.

Stiles remembers the last time he woke up to a screaming nightmare, to find Dad’s arms already around him.

 _“Shh,”_ Dad said. _“I’ve got you, son. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re alive. We’re all okay.”_

That’s all the counts in the end, isn’t it? That everyone’s okay.

Stiles bustles back into the dining room in the silence, Derek’s pie in his hands. “Okay, who wants dessert?”

There’s an odd tension in the room caused by Stiles’s reappearance, but it disappears along with the pie.

“This is great,” Dad says. “And you bought it from the grocery store?”

Derek nods.

“That place on Fourth, or the one over on Main?,” Dad says, and reaches for another piece.

Stiles slides it away from him. “Not very keto friendly, is it, Dad?”

Dad glowers at him.

“You found a way to get bacon,” Stiles tells him. “Don’t expect guilt-free pie as well. This isn’t a fantasy world we’re living in.”

Dad snorts, and the corners of Derek’s mouth turn up in the briefest hint of a smile.

After pie, Derek checks the time on his phone and makes the move to stand.

“Stiles says you’re living out on the site,” Dad says.

“Yeah.”

“No,” Dad counters.

“Excuse me?”

“No.” Dad folds his arms over his chest. “Stiles, go and make up the spare room for Derek. He can stay here until the house is ready.”

Derek goes an interesting shade of red. “Sherriff, I don’t—”

“No.” Dad stares Derek down. “If you want to start work at dawn every day, set your alarm half an hour earlier, and have a damn shower and eat some damn breakfast before you leave. Hell, I’ll come and help you on my days off if that’ll get it built quicker, but I don’t want you out there living in a _tent_.”

He doesn’t add ‘ _Not in your condition’_. But if that’s a conscious omission that Dad is making, Stiles doesn’t hear it. And neither does Derek, by the look on his face. Dad doesn’t want Derek to stop living in a tent because he’s pregnant. He just wants him to stop living in a tent because nobody should be living in a fucking tent.

Because that’s John Stilinski all over. He has a protective streak that has grown to encompass more than just his son. He looks out for Stiles, but he also looks out for Scott, and Lydia, and any of Stiles’s friends who don’t have their own dad around.

When he was a kid, it might have made Stiles a little jealous.

Not now.

Derek’s face moves through a million micro-expressions and settles at last on something achingly vulnerable and somehow gruff at the same time as though he’s embarrassed by his own feelings. 

And Stiles, watching Dad watching Derek, knows that’s the sort of dad he wants to be too. 

 

***

 

Stiles’s door opens sometime in the middle of the night. He isn’t surprised. He and Derek have always communicated better in the darkness. There’s probably something really sad about that: in the light of day they both pretended this was something it wasn’t. Something casual, something fun. But at night they held hands, and talked about their families, and the gaping holes that loss has left in their lives, and how it still hurts.

“Hey,” Stiles says, and lifts his comforter.

Derek slides under the covers like they’re back before graduation. Like the last few months never even happened.

“You dropped out of school?” Derek asks him, voice soft.

The darkness has always made it easier for Stiles to speak.

People who know him would laugh at that. Dad always says he could talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles. But not like _this_. Not about the fears and hopes he carries in secret. Not about the things that come from his heart.

Derek isn’t the only one of them who is terrified of being vulnerable.

“I want to be here,” Stiles says, his heart beating fast. “I want to be with you.”

“Stiles…” Derek’s breath is warm against his cheek. “I don’t even know yet what I’m going to do.”

“I know,” Stiles whispers. “But I want to be with you whatever happens.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Der.” Stiles reaches out and cups his cheek with his hand. “That’s the one thing I’ve _always_ known.”

Derek is silent, and Stiles wonders if he’s searching for a lie in his heartbeat.

He won’t find one though, because there’s nothing there to find.

And then Derek lifts his hand to cover Stiles’s, and brings it very slowly down to the curve of his stomach. He presses Stiles’s palm to the soft, warm fabric of his shirt, and Stiles lets out a sound that’s half a laugh, and half a sob, and he leans in and presses his mouth against Derek’s.

“It might not work,” Derek says when they end their kiss. “Us, I mean. It might not work.”

“I know,” Stiles says. “But I want to try.”

He hears Derek’s throat click as he swallows.

“Me too,” Derek whispers. “I want to try too.”

 

***

 

The house takes two and a half months to finish. Stiles and Derek work on it every day, and Dad joins them when he can. He brings along a bunch of deputies whenever there’s heavy lifting to be done, and Derek pays them in beer. Stiles spends so much time at Home Depot that he eventually lands himself a part-time job, and immediately takes advantage of his staff discount.

Stiles and his dad take care of the painting.

“Fumes, Derek!” Stiles exclaims. “Stay away from the fumes!”

Derek rolls his eyes, but lets Stiles pat his stomach gently. That’s only a new thing, and Stiles is taking full advantage of it. Derek hadn’t got abs anymore. Instead, he’s got a tiny paunch that Stiles finds fascinating. Stiles likes to talk to it as they’re falling asleep at night, since they’ve taken to sharing Stiles’s bed. They cuddle mostly, because they’re not back where they were yet, but that’s okay, because they’re also somewhere that’s _better_.  

They’re talking about a shared future now, with their house and their baby. And Stiles is happier than he’s been in a long time, even back when he and Derek were screwing each other’s brains out on a regular basis. They never really talked about the future then. But now, they’re not just talking about it, they’re doing it.

Also, Stiles saw the way that Derek’s gaze heated when Stiles came back from the shower the other day wearing only a towel.

Stiles sighs and dips his brush into the can of paint. No way are they going to be able to keep their hands off one another for much longer. And Jesus, Stiles can’t wait to get Derek’s dick in his mouth again. Lick it, and suck it with one hand on Derek’s pregnant belly, and the fingers of his other hand—

“Stiles!” Dad snaps. “Watch what you’re doing!”

Stiles give a guilty start and looks at the power outlet he almost painted over. Then he turns to look at Derek, who’s leaning in the doorway and smirking at him like he knows exactly what he was thinking.

 

***  

“Hey,” Stiles whispers that night, gently poking Derek’s belly. “Are you awake in there, little dude?”

Derek shifts. “It might not be a dude.”

“This is California, Derek,” Stiles snorts. “‘Dude’ is non gender specific.”

It’s Derek’s turn to snort.

Stiles stretches out beside Derek, keeping one hand on his belly. He never got to be the big spoon back when they were hot and heavy, but Derek lets him now. It makes Stiles warm with pride that Derek likes to sleep with Stiles’s arms around him, offering protection to him and the baby.

“What do you think it is?” Stiles asks. “A boy or a girl? God, what if it’s a _girl_? If it’s a girl, I might as well quit now!

He feels Derek tense a little, and a spark of panic flares in his gut. He’s so scared he’ll say the wrong thing, like he did when Derek broke this to him, and they’ll be back to where they started. It all still feels so precarious.

“That was a joke,” he says quickly. “I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t _quit_. God, I mean, girls are freaking awesome! Just, like, I don’t know anything about them.”

“It’s a baby, Stiles,” Derek says dryly, “not an alien species.”

Stiles feels a rush of relief that Derek didn’t push him away because of that dumbass joke. He babbles on gratefully. “No, I know. But also, they are a bit? Girls are complicated! Like, this one time, back when I thought I was in love with Lydia, I gave her a TV for her birthday, because I thought, ‘Hey, who doesn’t like TV?’ But she still refused to talk to me.”

Derek’s bitchface is incredibly pronounced in the moonlight. “You know that had nothing to do with the TV, right?”

“Okay. Point. I was weird and creepy, and I thought that if I threw gifts at her, she’d have to like me.” He rubs his hand over Derek’s belly, and the hairs tickle his palm. “I still barely understand girls, you know? I’m just saying I would probably know how to deal with a boy more easily.”

They lapse into silence for a while.

“I don’t mind,” Derek says at last. “That’s what people always say, isn’t it? That they don’t mind, as long as it’s healthy.” He hesitates. “But I kind of want a girl. I grew up with sisters. Laura, and Cora, and the twins. And my _mom_ …” he clears his throat and swallows. “I miss them. I think…I think my mom would have loved to have a granddaughter.”  

Stiles feels all their ghosts around them. It aches. It always will a little, probably.

“Yeah. Yeah, mine too.” Stiles rubs Derek’s belly. “If our little dude is a daughter, she’ll grow up to be an amazing woman, won’t she? Just like both her grandmothers.”

“It’s a lot to live up to,” Derek says quietly.

“For our kid?” Stiles laughs softly into Derek’s hair. “Der, our baby is already a magic fucking miracle. Living up to our moms is going to be a piece of cake. Our little dude is gonna be _incredible_.”

Derek laughs too, and curls his fingers around Stiles’s.

 

***

 

Lydia is first to arrive back to Beacon Hills for Thanksgiving. She demands to know why Stiles is no longer at college, blinks slowly when he spills the entire story, and then immediately starts to plan a baby shower.

“Derek doesn’t want to make a fuss,” Stiles says.

Lydia cocks an eyebrow and holds up her phone. “Why don’t I call him and ask him?”

Stiles assumes that will be an end to it, but suddenly Lydia _and_ Derek are planning a baby shower, and fuck, that’s weirder than anything else Beacon Hills has thrown at Stiles so far. Including pregnant male werewolves. But he likes that Derek isn’t just letting this happen. He likes that Derek is getting involved. It feels like a turning point. It feels like the baby is something they’re not just coming to terms with, or even something they’re cautiously looking forward to, but something they’re actually _celebrating_. Okay, so Stiles still skirts close to panic at least a dozen times a day when he thinks about how unready he is for a baby, but fuck that. Stiles has always been about throwing himself headfirst into a challenge, and fatherhood is the ultimate challenge, right?

He’s got this.

Between him and Derek, _they’ve_ got this.

By the time everyone else rolls into town again, the baby shower has turned into a housewarming party as well.

“Dude, I don’t know what to tell you,” Stiles says for what feels like the hundredth time. Scott is sitting on the end of his bed. His jaw has been dropped for about the last twenty minutes already, and shows no signs of lifting back into position any time soon. “It’s a thing that happened. Fuck if I know how—a spark meets a werewolf and weird shit happens, apparently—but Deaton’s been doing scans and everything. It’s really in there, and okay, it’s nothing we would have planned or anything, but it’s happened, and I’m happy, you know?”

Scott stares at him.

“I mean, it’s weird as fuck.” Stiles feels his mouth tug up into a smile. “But we’re _happy_.”

Scott’s jaw finally snaps back into place. “Wow, okay. I mean, that’s what matters, right?”

“Right.” Stiles tugs his Home Depot shirt off and scrabbles around in his closet for something to wear to the party tonight. “That’s what matters.”

 

***

 

Stiles fucked up at the start of all this.

He knows he did.

All it took was three little words.

_“You’re kidding me.”_

But now here he is, three months later, standing at the front door of the house he built with Derek, and if he fantasizes about living here too, then that doesn’t seem too crazy. He’s spent the last few months trying to prove himself to Derek in ways that aren’t too pushy, or aren’t overstepping any of Derek’s very brittle boundaries, and he’s very slowly earned Derek’s trust. Not the sort of trust that they’ve had for years now—the certainty that when things go to hell, they’ll jump in front of danger to save one another’s lives—but a different sort of trust. Jumping in front of metaphorical (and sometimes not so metaphorical) bullets is one thing. Stiles would do that for Derek. He’d do it for any one of his friends. Hell, he likes to think he’d do it for some random person in the street, but he’d prefer not to be tested on it. But to be trusted with Derek’s _heart_? That’s a whole different thing. That’s scarier, in many ways, than being trusted with his life.

Stiles is one of the last to arrive, thanks to Dad having to swing by the liquor store first and grab a six pack—like he couldn’t have done that any time during his shift—so when Derek opens the door to them, everyone else is already there.

Derek takes Stiles by the hand and leads him into the living room.

If he blinks, Stiles can still see the empty bones of the house, but tonight the living room is clean and comfortable, and there are strings of fairy lights around the windows, and looped over the curtain rails like tinsel. Everything sparkles and glows.

“Come here,” Derek says, and draws Stiles into the center of the room. “I have something for you.”

“For _me_?”

“We got off on the wrong foot with all of this,” Derek says, his expression soft and serious at the same time. “I want to make it up to you.”

There’s a box hanging from the ceiling like a piñata. Dangling from the box is a long piece of ribbon, with a key attached.

Stiles blinks at the key, and at Derek, and then around at the faces of his family and friends: Dad, Lydia, Melissa, Scott, Liam, Mason, Hayden. He sees the faces of his friends that are no longer here as well, and swallows down the ache in his throat.

“What’s all this?” he asks, his voice rasping.

“It’s a key to the house,” Derek says. “Move in with me?”

“Yes,” Stiles says. Yes. I love you, so yes.”

Stiles destroyed his life once with three little words. Makes sense that he can rebuild it just the same.

Derek’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and he leans forward, hands on Stiles’s hips. “Pull the key, Stiles.”

Stiles reaches out for the key, and looks up at the box. “Is this…?”

“Lydia made it,” Derek says. “I don’t know either. I told Deaton to tell her, but I wanted us to find out together.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, his heart beating faster. “Let’s do this together.”

He reaches out and snags the dangling key. Holds it in his hand as Derek’s arms come around him.

“So I just…?”

“Pull it,” Derek says.

Stiles bites his lip and tightens his grip on the key.

“Come on, Stiles!” Dad grouses. “The suspense is killing me here!”

Stiles laughs, and tugs on the key. There’s a faint ripping sound as the tape on the box tears, and then Stiles and Derek are standing under a shower of pink confetti.

“Holy shit,” Stiles says. He wipes his joyful tears away. “Der! Holy shit!”

Derek holds him close, his eyes shining.

“Derek,” Stiles says again, and discovers that there are three other little words still left to say, that bring him more happiness than he even knew was possible: “It’s a girl!”

 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Всего пара слов (Three Little Words)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17691425) by [FantikBantik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FantikBantik/pseuds/FantikBantik)




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